Former Death Row Engineer Talks About Tupac Auditioning For Star Wars

It’s no secret Tupac Shakur had a great acting career. From Poetic Justice to Juice, Pac starred in some timeless films. Recently, former Death Row Engineer Rick Clifford opened up about a situation in which Tupac was set to audition for George Lucas.

“We always talked about his film career and stuff,” Clifford said during an interview with 2Pac-Forum.com. “He was telling me that he was supposed to read for George Lucas and them. They wanted him to be a Jedi. Yeah, I’m serious. Samuel L. got Tupac’s part. Yeah, cause he said ‘old man’—you know he called me ‘old man.’ He said ‘Old man, keep your fingers crossed. I got three movies coming up. One of ‘em I gotta read for George Lucas.’”

Clifford went on to discuss his experience with altering the voices of artists who sounded similar to Tupac and Snoop Dogg to complete projects.

“All I knew is I get a call—this has to be around 98 or so, I guess,” he said. “I get a call from Kevin Lewis. ‘[We’re all coming back.] We’re working on The Chronic.’ I’m going ‘Oh, great.’ I get down to the studio. I said, ‘So hey, so when Dr. Dre get back?’ And they go ‘Oh, Dr. Dre ain’t coming back.’ I go ‘Well, ain’t we working on The Chronic?’ They go ‘Well uh.’ They heard that Dre [was] working on The Chronic, so they decided to put out a Chronic also. And that’s when I said to myself—cause Suge was in jail at this point. That’s when I said ‘This some bullshit.’ Then it got worse…They definitely wanted me back in the picture cause I record everybody the same. As soon as I put my mic technique on Tha Realest, the guy sounds exactly like Tupac. Then this other kid, Top Dogg, he sound just like Snoop. So, then that’s when they started having them fix records that Snoop had started or Pac had started.”